Lent 5                                                                             Ezekiel 37:1-14
Twente, Arnhem                                                                              Romans 8:6-11
                                                                                                                  John 11:1-45
Life in the Spirit over Death in the Flesh
A Sunday School teacher in Bristol was trying to explain to her children about being born again in the Spirit.  This is the language Jesus uses about those who believe in Him in chapter 3 of John’s Gospel.  The Sunday School teacher tried to draw the kids out on the subject by asking, ‘Are you born a Christian?’  One little boy replied, ‘No, Miss.  I was born normal.’Being a believing Christian is a peculiar thing in this generation.  The missiologist Stuart Murray opens his book entitled ‘Post-Christendom’ with another example:  In a London school a teenager with no church connections hears the Christmas story for the first time.  His teacher tells it well and he is fascinated by this amazing story.  Risking his friends’ mockery, after the lesson he thanks her for the story.  One thing disturbed him so he asked, ‘Why did they give the baby a swear word for his name?’  Believing Christianity is not only not altogether normal, it is also, in many places, unknown.When Ezekiel has his vision from God, some 570 years before Christ, Israel was a defeated and enslaved nation, living in exile in Babylon.  Yet even though their prospects seemed hopeless, like a valley full of dry bones, God showed his prophet that if there is faith, God can turn any situation around.  God can bring life to dead and dry old bones.  But there must be faith.  There must be the Spirit, ruach, the breath of God that brings life.  Without faith and the Spirit, though, our vision boils down to the same old hopeless and helpless bones.I sometimes come across non-Christians who ask me what I do.  When I say I am a Christian minister, sometimes they say, ‘That must be hard, especially since church numbers are empty’.  I usually think three things:

1. Believing Christians have always been in the minority in society so not much has changed except the lack of social pressure call oneself Christian.
2. Besides lots of churches are not empty – come and see!
3. Faith is not about popularity, but what is worth believing.  Even if I were the last believer on earth, I would have faith in Christ, because all he stands for and who he is is worth believing in.

The main witness we have to a weary and dry world is simply to have faith, hope and love, when others may not.  We do not have to have clever arguments.  But we must have faith, hope and love.  Those things speak for themselves (though we should be ready to explain them, as St Peter tells us.)  And woe to us if we lack faith in God and his purposes, if we lack hope that anything is possible by His Spirit, if we lack love for him, each other, and anyone who crosses our path.  Without faith, hope and love we are a sad lot.  But if we have faith, hope and love, and live lives animated the Spirit of God, then we have the greatest gifts you could ask for, worth sharing.Living in faith, hope & love by the Spirit may not be normal. But it is good and right… and it beats the alternatives.St Paul talks about the alternatives.  The passage from Romans 8:6-11 is a nightmare for translators.  St Paul uses two words, sarx, which we usually render as ‘flesh’, and soma, which we read as ‘body’.  But they are not synonymous.  Sarx stands for our fallen nature and is fundamentally hostile to God.  The soma of the believer is already being renewed by the Spirit and will one day be completely restored in the resurrection.  Paul speaks very disparagingly of living according to the flesh (sarx).  He’s not saying that our physical bodies are evil.  Instead he’s talking about people whose horizons are limited to this world and whose focus is on the self.  Who cannot believe in higher things because they refuse to.  They tend to be pessimistic, cynical and corrupt and want others to be the same.  That is living by the flesh and not spirit.In a way this can start with the body.  When our identity becomes solely attached to our physical bodies we can become terrified of how we look or how fit we are, fearful of wrinkles or cellulite.  And then when we die we have little concept of that part of ourselves that is truly who were are, living on.  If flesh is all there is, how could we live on?  It is said in the first half of life we try to gain control over things, and that in the second half, we learn to let go.  Perhaps this is one of the spiritual gifts of growing old, learning to let go of the physical and the material, and seek the spriritual?Jesus is not afraid of physical bodies – and not just perfect ones either.  He doesn’t mind touching a decaying corpse.  He shows us how to live spiritually.  In the simple reassurance of a place for us in heaven.Jesus lives by faith and by the Spirit.  His world is not limited by thinking only of the flesh and its limits.  Jesus crosses those limits, and leads us to do the same.In chapter 11 of John’s Gospel, Jesus does something that will precipitate his own death.  Out of compassion, Jesus raises his friend Lazarus.  This is, according to John, the final straw to bring down the wrath of the religious authorities on Jesus.  But Jesus does not live according to their world, according to the flesh.  He lives the freeing life of the Spirit.  So he will lay down his life for his friends.  Because he truly believes in the resurrection and the life.  And so does not live out of fear for what would happen to his body.It is challenging, living by the Spirit.  Even people like Martha and Mary, who have real trust, have only limited belief: ‘Lord, if you had been here….’  But Jesus challenges Martha: ‘I am the resurrection and the life, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die – do you believe this?’  Martha’s response is the classic statement of faith, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’  Those who believe, and who live like it, will see God revealed in their lives.  And so Mary and Martha see God work a miracle.  True, Lazarus is raised to an ordinary mortal life.  He will eventually die.  But his raising points to the greater miracle at Easter.  Though Lazarus and each of us will die, that should not stop us from living.  In the Spirit and in faith.  Amen.                                                                          

Any questions?  Contact: The Chaplain, Revd Sam Van Leer, 026 495 0620